Category: Rich Hoffman

Walking School Buses: More dumb ideas driven by the Zombies of Lakota

Not everyone at the Lakota school system located in an affluent northern Cincinnati suburb is a levy zombie.  16-year-old Emma as a student was fourteen during the period of time Doc Thompson referenced as he was hosting Glenn Beck’s radio show from New York City.  On that very popular midday nationwide radio broadcast Doc Thompson thought back in time to our experiences fighting the Lakota school levy when the district retaliated against voters by cutting busing to residents wishing to impose inconvenience and turn, a “no” vote to a “yes” vote in the next election.   (CLICK TO REVIEW.)  Recently Michelle Obama advocated as part of her nationwide health initiative that school districts activate a really dim-witted program called Walking School Buses, which are essentially packs of kids who walk to school instead of riding in a vehicle.  It wasn’t lost to Doc Thompson the hypocrisy as he remembered the reason for Lakota’s busing cuts and thought it ironic that now Michelle Obama—as the queen of public education avocation was proposing that the very thing districts used as weapons against tax payers was now being sold as a healthy solution.  This prompted Emma from Lakota to call Doc Thompson at his New York City studio to poke some fun at the hypocrisy.  Click the video below to listen to the hilarious radio segment.

As crazy as the dialogue between Doc and Skip was in the radio bit they were not kidding.  The Walking School Bus program is real, and an officially endorsed theory of The White House.  From the website advocates declare:

“Studies show that fewer children are walking and biking to school, and more children are at risk of becoming overweight. Changing behaviors of children and parents require creative solutions that are safe and fun.

Implementing a walking school bus can be both.

A walking school bus is a group of children walking to school with one or more adults. If that sounds simple, it is, and that’s part of the beauty of the walking school bus. It can be as informal as two families taking turns walking their children to school to as structured as a route with meeting points, a timetable and a regularly rotated schedule of trained volunteers.

When beginning a walking school bus, remember that the program can always grow. It often makes sense to start with a small bus and see how it works. Pick a single neighborhood that has a group of parents and children who are interested. It’s like a carpool—without the car—with the added benefits of exercise and visits with friends and neighbors. For an informal bus:

  1. Invite families who live nearby to walk.

  2. Pick a route and take a test walk.

  3. Decide how often the group will walk together.

  4. Have fun!”

To verify everything you have just read and everything that Doc Thompson elaborated on with comic delivery—but was 100% true, you can see the link for yourself below.

http://www.walkingschoolbus.org/

Unbelievably the site is actually maintained by the Pedestrian and BicycleInformationCenter for the Partnership for a Walkable America, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Transportation.  That means that tax payers paid for the employees who came up with this whole idea which was an obvious waste of money.

Public schools for years have done just what Lakota did when they did not pass their tax increases—they took away school busing putting the burden of transportation on homeowners to drive their children to school.  When that method failed to work, which began to happen in the summer of 2010 all across the country as per pupil averages in public schools climbed to around $10K per student, Americans had shown that they had enough and tax requests were being defeated in greater frequency as a diminishing marginal return had been reached.  Now the same kind of public employees who came up with the failed strategy of extorting tax increases against communities have changed their strategy completely and are now declaring that walking to school is good for children.

The foolishness of both stances taken by the government employees involved in these decisions is catastrophic to any society that wishes to advance.  Just for putting their name at the bottom of the Walking School Bus web site, The Department of Transportation should be eliminated.  If walking is what The Department of Transportation considers under their authority, or concern, then they are overstepping their boundaries tyrannically and must be stopped.  If this is the way they spend their time and resources, they are ineffective and worthless.

It was good to hear a young lady from Lakota call into a gigantic national show that has a footprint throughout that portion of the day which ranges between 7 million and 15 million listeners.  Doc is aware that Lakota is seeking another levy, and now that his exposure is national as opposed to regional when he was in Cincinnati his voice carries to many more ears.  It surprised me that a young lady was listening to the broadcast and cared enough to call in and offer some satirical commentary to a ridiculous problem.  The caller Emma was much younger when Lakota implemented the busing cut plan and she has seen, as many students have, the hypocrisy of those who are in charge, and it is good to witness that she cared enough to voice her opinion.  In past levies, the school has used children as pro levy advocates, and certainly Lakota has managed to recruit a fair number of Zombies of Lakota to carry on the progressive message of public education that Michelle Obama so hypocritically represents without any real thought.  But Emma was a ray of hope that not all children or even parents in Lakota are zombies and have the cognition to participate in an intelligent discussion, even on a large national stage that is heard by millions.

As for Doc, I hope he and Skip had a good time on the Flight Walk from New York.  If Michelle Obama and The Department of Transportation have their way we will all walk before we drive, walk before we fly, and find ourselves sitting around campfires awaiting orders from some village chief dictating our movements.  The march of the typical progressive is a regression to the time before invention so to not advance human kind into a new age, but to preserve Mother Earth for all time as a superior idea to the products of human intellect—which they detest.  That is why people who think the way they do are the Zombies of Lakota.

Rich Hoffman

“Justice Comes with the Crack of a Whip!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Another Lakota Scandal: George C. Merk and the Levy Zombies Strike Again

There is a lot that is very wrong about the recent revelation that Lakota West High School math teacher George C. Merk paid $66,173 by the tax payers was placed on a 45 day license suspension beginning over the summer months.  The teacher admitted to inappropriate communication with students of a sexual nature which was revealed during a conference with district staff Jan. 11, 2012, concluding with a consent agreement dated June 26, 2013.  That is a long-span of time to resolve one human resources issue.  Merk’s five-year teaching license was suspended from June 12 through July 26 but he is clear for 2013-14 school year.  This case does not surprise me as I have verbal confirmation of many such stories, and usually the press does not investigate them.  However, in this case, Michael Clark broke the story in the Cincinnati Enquirer which did surprised me as it required a public records request to get to the facts.  As the story broke, both the Enquirer and the Journal had well-written stories which explained the facts in great detail by Hannah Poturalski and Michael Clark that was a great service to the community, and can be seen in their entirety below for the convenience of the curious investigator complete with original links to the stories as they appeared in online form.

 

Michael D. Clark reports: in The Cincinnati Enquirer

A Lakota West High School math teacher’s license has been suspended for “inappropriate” communications with students, including exchanging recollections of sexual experiences and orientation.

But the teacher, George C. Merk, will return to the classroom at the start of the school year next month.

Merk, 41, was previously suspended without pay in March 2012 for 10 days for what Lakota Schools Superintendent Karen Mantia described as “unacceptable, insubordinate, deceitful and unprofessional” behavior.

According to a Feb. 15, 2012, reprimand issued by Lakota officials, Merk “admitted” to communicating with students via text messages, and other means, of disallowed subjects, including:

  • “(Students’) sexual orientation and their sexual experiences.”
  • “Your sexual orientation and your first sexual experience.”
  • “You denied receiving a picture of a condom box through text message from a student.”

Mantia wrote: “This behavior is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”

A report on Merk’s behavior and suspension was then submitted to the Ohio Department of Education’s Office of Professional Conduct for further investigation. That investigation ended last month under a consent agreement between Merk and the ODE.

The agreement, obtained by The Enquirer through a public records request, revealed that Merk agreed to have his teaching license suspended during the summer break for 45 days, ending July 26. Moreover, he has to complete 24 hours of training “on appropriate teacher-student boundaries” by Sept. 1 and he will no longer “communicate with current students using social media or by other electronic communications.”

Merk’s actions were not considered criminal and did not initiate an investigation by West Chester Township Police, police said.

Merk, who previously taught at Wilmington Schools, declined to comment.

His attorney, Julie Ford of Dayton, said, “(Merk) signed the consent agreement not because he believes he was guilty of any wrongdoing but to put this matter behind him and avoid any delays in the renewals of his current teaching licenses.”

“Both the Lakota school district and Ohio Department of Education are satisfied with this resolution, and Mr. Merk looks forward to resuming his teaching work in the fall,” Ford said.

Diane Brunsman, Lakota’s executive director for human resources, said “the findings of the Ohio Department of Education investigation are not grounds for termination.”

Both Brunsman and Mantia declined to comment further.

Merk was hired by Lakota in 2002 and his current salary is $66,173.

A review of Merk’s personnel file since 2002 showed no indications of previous transgressions and overall he has received high performance reviews by Lakota officials.

Under the state agreement, Lakota is also required to submit “detailed reports” every three months for the next two years to the ODE on Merk’s conduct.

http://westchesterbuzz.com/2013/07/17/teachers-license-suspended-for-sexual-texts/

By Hannah Poturalski

Staff Writer–The Journal

LIBERTY TWP. —

A Lakota West High School teacher whose teaching license was suspended for actions with students described as insubordinate and deceitful by the district will be returning to the classroom this August.

George C. Merk, 41, of Loveland, was placed on a 10-day unpaid suspension in March 2012 following an internal investigation by school officials. He has since been approved for teaching math in the 2013-14 school year at a salary of $66,173.

During a conference with district staff on Jan. 11, 2012, Merk reportedly admitted to:

  • having text message communication with students regarding sexual orientation, first sexual experiences and other personal issues
  • failing to report a student was bullied
  • providing a student with his cell phone number through a Facebook message
  • posting Facebook statuses about students’ academic levels and disparaging Lakota West High School administration
  • receiving a text message from a student offering to buy him an iPad
  • denying having received a picture of a condom box in a text message from a student.

“This behavior is unacceptable and will not be tolerated by Lakota Local School District employees,” wrote Superintendent Karen Mantia in a formal reprimand from Feb. 15, 2012. “Mr. Merk, your actions described above were insubordinate, deceitful, unacceptable and unprofessional.”

The district then submitted a report to the Ohio Department of Education’s Office of Professional Conduct. As part of the investigation, Merk entered into a consent agreement — dated June 26, 2013 — with ODE that outlines several stipulations.

The terms of the agreement include:

  • Merk’s five-year teaching license being suspended for 45 days, from June 12 through July 26
  • detailed reports on Merk’s conduct will be submitted to ODE every three months for two years
  • completing 24 hours of training on appropriate teacher-student boundaries
  • not communicating with current students using Facebook, text messages and other electronic means.

Merk’s attorney, Julie C. Ford, of the Dayton firm Doll, Jansen, Ford & Rakay, said her client fully cooperated with the investigation by ODE.

“Mr. Merk was not accused of having a sexual or otherwise inappropriate relationship with any students; at most, the school district concluded he had discussed topics that might have been considered inappropriate,” Ford said.

The investigation ended last December, but a proposed penalty wasn’t reached until the end of the 2012-13 academic year, she said.

Ford said her client didn’t attempt to negotiate a lesser penalty or go through a full hearing process before his current teaching and principal’s licenses were to expire at the end of June.

“He therefore signed the consent agreement not because he was guilty of any wrongdoing but only to put this matter behind him and to avoid any delays in the renewals of his licenses,” Ford said. “Mr. Merk continues to be a model teacher and employee at Lakota. Mr. Merk looks forward to resuming his teaching work in the fall.”

Merk joined the Lakota teaching staff in 2002, after six years teaching at Wilmington City Schools. Merk’s personnel file at Lakota doesn’t include any other disciplinary or performance issues.

“Mr. Merk is an outstanding teacher who takes great pride in his profession,” reads an evaluation dated May 16, 2013. “He goes above and beyond the district’s expectations, and his students are successful as the result of his efforts in the classroom.”

http://www.journal-news.com/news/news/lakota-teacher-suspended-for-inappropriate-communi/nYs6q/

 

Now that this story is out, I will have a lot more to say about it in subsequent articles.  But the gist of the situation is this– George C. Merk is not worth $66,173 as a public employee and I resent having to pay such people so much money with my taxes.  People like him are low quality personalities who are instructing kids to be low-quality adults.  The very nature of Merk even desiring to inquire about the sexual nature of his students as a 41-year-old man is disgusting.  In a sexual context people are often attracted to others who share their intellectual values even though much is focused on physical attributes.  Merk’s tendency to desire juicy gossip about the sexual nature of his students indicate that Merk intellectually is equal to his students, which disqualifies him as any kind of intellectual leader by my measure and he should be terminated from the Lakota school district.  Teachers should not have access to students outside of a classroom whether it is Facebook, Twitter, or any other social network tool, because as instructors, teachers should be operating at a superior intellectual position. 

 

However, as critical as I often am of the Lakota school board, and Superintendent Mantia, they have no real control over any disciplinary action against Merk because the Lakota math teacher is protected by his labor union—which is why his punishment was just silly words issued by Mantia and his suspension was carried out when the school was already shut down for the summer.  The teachers and their labor union run the asylum where the Zombies of Lakota know that bad behavior cannot be punished, yet the tax payers are “forced” to support such behavior through force with their property values just because the school exists near their homes.  

 

The punishment to Merk for his disgraceful actions is essentially nothing but a little embarrassment.  He has still been paid a salary that is 20 to 30% more than the average Lakota resident for a job that is only active for 7.5 to 9 hour per day, five days a week, nine months out of the year.  Merk does not appreciate his job otherwise he would not have engaged in the behavior outlined above displaying a low intellectual understanding of sexual context that is closer to high school kids with thriving pituitary glands not yet acclimated to adult life.  George Merk, and people like him should not be in a class room because they lack the intellectual high ground with their students, and have lost their ability to teach.  A teacher is not an equal to the student; they should be the type of people students aspire to become.  When a teacher demonstrates that they are no better than the rest of the puberty bound young people, then moral authority is lost, and instruction is nearly impossible.  Worse than that, the people of Lakota should not be forced to pay for such employees with tax increases and social extortion. 

 

Of course I will have more to say on this issue, but for now just the contents of Merk’s actions should be considered with the punishment he received—which is to say virtually nothing.  When Merk’s attorney Julie C. Ford stated that “He (Merk) signed the consent agreement not because he was guilty of any wrongdoing but only to put this matter behind him and to avoid any delays in the renewals of his licenses, she was saying that Mr. Merk did not recognize that he did anything wrong.  When Ford said Merk was not accused of having a sexual or otherwise inappropriate relationship with any students; at most, the school district concluded he had discussed topics that might have been considered inappropriate.”  Merk and his attorney Ford in this case do not consider having text message communication with students regarding sexual orientation, sexual experiences and other personal issues to be inappropriate between a student and a teacher.  Further, failing to report a student was bullied is not negligent behavior as indicated by Merk–or providing a student with his cell phone number through a Facebook message.  Posting Facebook statuses about students’ academic levels and disparaging Lakota West High School administration is apparently acceptable behavior with these professionals based on their statements.  It is also OK to receive a text messages from students offering to buy Merk an iPad which should be considered an obvious bribe.  Those are the kinds of actions that Ford stated Merk might have performed inappropriately leaving the door open for anti-concept interpretation declaring innocence at the same time. 

These are the types of employees that tax payers are told are invaluable to Lakota’s community.  When the Levy Zombies take to the streets in the fall of 2013 for the November tax increase they are fighting for teachers like George C. Merk to continue the kind of behavior that occurred under the classroom tutelage of a Lakota West math teacher who will return to the classroom for the 2013/2014 school year.  Teachers like Merk are more interested in being “cool” to their students instead of actually teaching them anything, as the boundaries between teacher and student have been intentionally blurred by a failed education system that produces teachers who would rather be 15-year-old kids than 41-year-old adults making $66,173 a year.  The teacher is paid to be better than the children, so that students will try.  The teacher is not paid to be one of the “cool guys” in an ocean of subservient children who would rather manipulate their way to a good grade instead of actually working for it.  It is that second example that Merk is so guilty and the reason he should not be employed as a teacher in any public school anywhere. 

Oh, and the title to this article was Levy Zombies Strike Again.  CLICK HERE to read about the first time.  

Rich Hoffman

“Justice Comes with the Crack of a Whip!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

How to Stop Racism: Who cares what Eric Holder says?

Who cares what Eric Holder said about the George Zimmerman acquittal or Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law?  Isn’t Holder a criminal?  Isn’t he guilty of deaths from his own actions, and destruction of individual rights performed on a mass scale?   If Holder were not the top cop of the United States Government wouldn’t he find himself in jail for the same types of crimes he accuses others of?   Of course a criminal is going to wish that “Stand Your Ground” laws were obsolete, so that their crimes can be committed against others more easily.  So his comments have no merit as he should be the one on trial, not George Zimmerman, who already had his day in court.  But Holder’s foolish comments were not the most ridiculous comments that came forth in the wake of the Zimmerman murder trial in Sanford, Florida.  The dumbest comments of all came from those crying for an end to racism in America upon the Zimmerman acquittal.  Out of all the news outlets and commentators who make millions upon millions of dollars giving statements and providing opinions no one has delivered a way to rid America of racism when the accusations have been so extreme once Zimmerman was found not guilty.  So I will provide the answer where others have failed.

The way to end racism is to stop using skin color as a weapon to advance collective causes and level the playing field for all individuals by allowing merit to determine all benefits in society.  When any collective group demands “equality” they are asking for thuggish democracy to take away resources from someone and give to another so that all can have equal value.  This allows people of low value to make themselves appear to have a higher value by lowering the value of others through legalized theft (income redistribution).  People of low value may have such a status because they made bad decision in life—such as drinking too much, smoking marijuana so that they cannot hold good paying jobs that require drug tests, or having children where there is not a responsible male in a household to help provide family structure.  People who do dumb things in their lives often seek the protection of social collectivism to hide their crimes and the only way vacant personalities can find value where they have squandered it away is to take it away from someone else.

Racism has given such collective groups the illusion of value.  By seeking equality they really mean “wealth redistribution.”  This is why such groups who advocate racial inequality always fail to identify the value of human beings as a criterion for equality.  Rather the true meaning of equality is to allow all races, all sexes, all shapes, sizes, and backgrounds of all people to have equal access to success.  Racial groups wish to stack the odds of success in their favor with democratic force through collectivism rather than individual merit.  This is why racism advocates for more power and so-called “equality” do not support political candidates like Herman Cain, or Dr. Ben Carson.  In the racism debate men who have achieved success based on individual merit no matter what their skin color are always overlooked, because the goal of the equal rights movement is not equal access to success, as men like Carson and Cain represent, but in the ability to level the economic playing field of society by cutting down the high spots and filling the low spots with displaced value.

To end racism tomorrow, all society would need to do would be to recognize the value of merit.  Those who work to achieve good merit in their lives would all have equal access to value, while those who chose not to work in such a way would find themselves lacking.   If the entire world functioned from a desire to be good ethically, morally, socially—good in every respect of the  word, there would be no racism because there would be no advantage of one gang of thugs over another.  No group would have dominance over any other, as they would all be irrelevant.  After all, isn’t it the desire of the black groups to take power from the perceived, “white man” or the “white supremacists” to take power from the “one world order” or the women from the men, or the men from the women, or the children from their parents, or the public sector worker from the private—all the mentioned are aspects of society that are lacking individual merit and seek their value in the safety of collectivism.  That is where the trouble begins and ends.  The way to end racism is to judge others on individual merit, not by any group affiliation.  When the incentive to gang rule is removed, the issue of racism will be put to rest.

In the wake of the Zimmerman verdict, gangs took to the streets at all political levels to exploit the tragic death for their own social positions, using democratic imposition to force rules on society that is ultimately designed to rob value from once social sector to provide another what it’s missing.  The behavior is as stupid as a village of hunters and gathers fighting over the watering hole of an animal both are hunting, or a bunch of foolish Europeans fighting over one version of religion over another.   Collective groups are the source of the trouble because they seek to hide individual merit behind their social blanket allowing poor behavior and decisions to be supplemented by the value of others in their group.   In every case, such as the would-be criminal Eric Holder, or the members of the Black Panthers, or any of the radical demonstrators who took to the streets to vandalize property like a bunch of malcontents when Zimmerman was found not guilty—the demand is not for justice of a slain kid, the demand is for an improvement in social status without the work of actually earning it.  Behind the actions of the hoards who are declaring “equality” are drug addicts, womanizers, jobless buffoons, welfare recipients, child molesters, victims of the molested, and a whole host of characters who are lacking personal value for one reason or the other and find it is much easier to steal value from others to fill themselves than actually doing the work of being good people of good merit.  That is what racism is all about, and why it will never go away so long as groups of any kind are given sway over other groups in a perpetual battle for value that is unearned.

Rich Hoffman

“Justice Comes with the Crack of a Whip!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The Fuzzy Math of Lakota’s Zombies: Short-sighted public workers destroy communities

The Zombies of Lakota are back with more fuzzy math that only a brain-dead caricature of flesh-eating cannibalism could justify.  Lakota as a school district has lost 1,454 students since the 2009-2010 school year is looking to raise taxes on all residents by about $192 annually per $100,000 home.  That means most homes in the Lakota district will pay $400 dollars more a year over and above what they pay now while many business owners will see an increase of up to $10,000 more a year on properties valued at around $5 million, which is quite common.  When the Zombies of Lakota say that the tax increases are marginally small, they do not take into account such large figures, but simply assume that the good nature of local residents will be gullible enough to pay just a bit more in taxes to overcome their internal management deficiencies.

The Zombies of Lakota know that they have a teacher contract that is up in June of 2014 and they need the money to pay for long promised raises for their current employees.  Also, Lakota due to the declining enrollment of nearly 1,500 students has lost $5,700 in state funding for each of those students.  Yet to explain it all away to the community they have stated that their November 5.5 mill continuous levy they wish to add to the current 33.5 mills of effective millage will give them $13.8 million of additional revenue to invest $13.5 million into a multi-year technology upgrade, $6.3 million in upgraded security including seven additional security personnel, and an extra $2.8 million in programming each year.  The math is something only a brain-dead zombie could make sense of, because anybody with a brain can clearly see the scam for what it is.

Lakota is looking over the next 5 to 7 years of reducing their student population back to nearly the level it was when I went to school there, well before there were two high schools and nearly 20 elementary schools.  Many of those schools in the near future will have to be closed due to a lack of students to fill them, likely a third, possibly half of them.  The costs for young families with school aged children to move into the Liberty Twp/West Chester area is just too high, leaving only mature empty-nesters able to afford homes with an average price of over $200K.  Yet to the north of Lakota in the neighboring district of Monroe 111 students who participated in open enrollment last year are being turned away because the school is too full.  Monroe stated that they do not have enough teachers or buildings to accommodate everyone.  Monroe property values are lower than those in Lakota, so more starter families are picking Monroe and other communities to the north of Lakota to buy homes, where taxes are not yet too high, and average home values are still between $100K and $200K.  Years ago when the communities of Princeton, Springdale, and Evendale were collapsing on themselves due to high taxation, Lakota enjoyed the spillover effect as new families moved north to avoid the inflated home prices and high taxes.  Now it is Lakota that has the high taxes, the inflation and a desperate need for better social management.

Lakota should be looking to cut massive amounts of their staff in recognition of their business climate, but like blood thirsty zombies, they only look for more hides off the backs of tax payers to pay for their mismanagement.  By seeking a tax increase Lakota hopes to avoid the difficult decision of massive lay-offs, which must happen and the closure of a percentage of their 22 school buildings so they can consolidate resources.  Instead of making hard decisions administrators are considering to hire security staff and cameras on buildings that will soon be empty shells.  The Zombies of Lakota will continue to cry for more periods of learning going from 6 back to 7 and bringing back music and art along with early literacy in kindergarten through third grade, elements to education that should have never been cut to start with.  The intention ahead of the cuts were to extort the community to pass school levies, and it didn’t work, so like mindless zombies the administrators are retreating from their previous position as their enrollment has dropped, and people are voting with their feet.  Students are enrolling where the property is cheaper and the taxes are less.  But those home owners move to Monroe so they can at least be near the kind of businesses that are in Lakota which are valued at $5 million per property.  Many of the strip malls around Lakota are set at around that value.  For the property owners to absorb the cost of the tax increase they will have to pass the rates off onto their tenets which would be around $2000 a year for each business.  That means the little corner coffee shop, pizza place, Chinese restaurant, hair cut specialist, even the nail salons will have to pay $2000 more a year above the high cost that they currently pay.  Monroe residents enjoy driving south to participate in these wonderful benefits to the economy, but they return home to Monroe where the costs are cheaper to live.  In Lakota this is why Tri-County used to be so popular as residents would drive south to enjoy the businesses there.  But as public transportation began to bus in more residents from Section 8 communities Lakota and Mason shoppers showed a desire to stay in their communities which sparked a building boom for business.  The result is that the once thriving Tri-County Mall is now bankrupt.

This kind of mindless management is what is expected from the Zombies of Lakota who are simply copying the mindless behavior of the zombies of Princeton, the Zombies of Finnytown, the Zombies of Wyoming, and the Zombies of Evendale from years past who all thought that they could endlessly pursue tax increases to the sum of their perpetual survival only to find that all they succeeded in doing was creating a society of zombies all trying to consume each other rather than being productive.

The Zombies of Lakota are the single greatest threat to a thriving community, they consume the true value of a district in favor of immediate gratification so to avoid the hard decisions of real management.  At Lakota, unlike the other communities mentioned from the past, the value of the community is still high before declining enrollment has hit the schools making the solution easy for everyone to see.  Lakota must lay off their employees and districts like Monroe, Middletown, and Franklin may have to pick them up, but Lakota cannot keep its staff at its current levels.  Everyone with a brain can see the situation clearly, except of course the drooling zombies who seen nothing but consumption on their immediate horizons.  That is why a No vote in the November election is so important.  It will help the rest of the community learn who the zombies are and who they aren’t.  A NO vote of course means that a person is a rational thinking human being.  A YES vote means that the voter is simply a slithering thoughtless zombie that is trying to destroy the Lakota district with short-sightedness, and blood thirsty tax consumption.  The math for the Zombies of Lakota tells a story that is not good for their kind, yet they ignore it anyway, to their own detriment. If Lakota is to succeed into the future, the zombies must be defeated, and to do that, a NO vote at the ballot box is ever more important than it has ever been.  The value of the community depends on it.

Rich Hoffman

“Justice Comes with the Crack of a Whip!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

‘The Lone Ranger’ Movie Review: A wonderful film that celebrates the individual character of America

???????????????With all the lead up to the movie being so intense here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom my lack of a review for The Lone Ranger was simply due to the fact that I was on vacation with my family when the film was released and there wasn’t time to physically go see the movie.  On two occasions while I was vacationing in Florida I intended to take my family to see The Lone Ranger, once at Downtown Disney, but had to withdrawal because the day was already overbooked, and then again at Merritt Square Mall which was down the road from our Atlantic Coast condo.  But there, getting everyone together to see the movie on a busy schedule while also coming and going from Disney World was nearly impossible, so I delayed my viewing until we were able to return home in Ohio.

But I did read the reviews that were coming in from our sea-side balcony which were actually hostile to The Lone Ranger which gave me great suspicion.  When I write about a movie with grand enthusiasm the reason is usually more than the film just being good, but because I see the struggle of the film makers to overcome the real Ellsworth Tooheys of the media who were trained by statist oriented education practices to recognize a threat to their social fabric which The Lone Ranger represents, and to assassinate such creative endeavors before they see the light of day.  I have spoken at great length about this very thing occurring with Christopher Nolan from The Dark Knight trilogy where critics attacked Nolan for his obvious warnings about an overly altruistic society.  Critics blasted Dark Knight Rises once they realized that the film was a not very concealed warning about communism in society after building up the social anticipation from the previous two films without such obvious proclamations.  Nolan saved his message for the final film, which made a billion dollars at the box office in spite of the terrible reviews the film received.  ???????????????With The Lone Ranger I expected to see even after the extremely negative reviews, a movie from Disney that was just good ol’ fashion fun—I did not expect yet another film with very heavy opinions against the government position of collectivism over the traditional rugged individualism that built America from the start.  Coming from the Disney Studios I expected a more disguised effort, especially with Johnny Depp staring as Tonto, and sharing a producing credit.  But if the nation is divided equally down the middle with Tea Party type Americans on one side, and welfare collecting altruists on the other, Disney usually makes films that all types of people will enjoy.  This is good for their box office numbers, but runs counter to the type of messages that Walt Disney himself believed who actually testified before a congressional committee against communism during the height of the McCarthy Hearings.  But this Lone Ranger was made by Disney to show favor toward the former of those demographic groups and not the later.???????????????

When The Lone Ranger is introduced as a young lawyer traveling from the East Coast by train the first bits of dialogue which come from Armie Hammer who was confronted by a religious group advocating Bible studies, was to hold up his copy of John Locke’s The Second Treatise of Government and declare, “This is my Bible.”  Upon that startling declaration I immediately knew why the film reviews were so terrible as The Lone Ranger was in love with America, and was making no mistake about it.  The film was setting out to attack many misconceptions about events which took place during a period of almost perfect capitalism in The United States, during the late 1800s.  ???????????????The Second Treatise of Government was one of the foundation books which people like Thomas Jefferson used to help shape the argument about the kind of country that America would be.  Modern Americans who regularly attend Tea Party events know that John Locke is one of the philosophers who opened the door to the way of thinking that distinctly became freedom loving.  To altruists, this is a major social danger as any message that exhibits freedom as one of the highest human endeavors also seeks to be free from social stupidity, the self-determined poor (lazy people), and the malcontents of civilization.  Social progressives have desired for years to shape American thought into reflecting European sentiment of sacrifice, shared suffering, and a focus on the “greater good” while steering the educated masses away from a personal love of individual freedom.  ???????????????Opening the film with a direct node to John Locke was a bold declaration that I was surprised made it past the Disney executives screening the film.  It’s possible that some of them did not know what the book meant to American foundation, but it is unlikely to have slipped by so many eyes without anybody knowing, especially Johnny Depp, who has been known to show up to film screenings showing his open support of Che Guevara.  I thought the John Locke reference was quite extraordinary but the references did not end there so I know that it was not an accident.

The film continued on as a fantastic western that was often a cross between the old Sergio Leone westerns composed musically by Ennio Morricone and the hysterical romp through the old west that was touched on by Back to the Future III.   The movie was very funny at times as Johnny Depp’s Tonto was brilliantly eccentric.  The film was wonderfully photographed, evenly paced, and was very passionate about its subject matter.  ???????????????It was an unapologetic western that might have been an early episode of the TV show Davy Crockett, only with Industrial Light and Magic doing some spectacular visual effects.  The stunts were ambitious, and the scope of the project was mammoth.  It was the largest scale western I think has ever been attempted.  But The Lone Ranger himself does not drink, does not curse, does not use tobacco (he refused when offered), he does not want to kill people, and is a naively good guy from the beginning to the end of the film.  The only character arch that John Reid embarked on evolving from the beginning to the end was in hardening up from a naive lawyer to a man who isn’t afraid to pull the trigger on a bad guy by the end of the film.  Reid never had a moment of weakness in the film where he got drunk, caved into the seductions of a woman, or lost his moral compass.  He was firmly focused on justice from the beginning of the film till the very end.???????????????

The bad guy in the film however was Cole played brilliantly by Tom Wilkinson.  I suspect that many of the reviewers who wrote such bad things about The Lone Ranger as a movie saw themselves as the evil character Cole, who spoke often very flowery about the need for “social sacrifice,” the “greater good,” and destroying entire groups of people if they stood in his way of vision for progress.  The film showed the Indian rebellions with extraordinary glory which was much more epic than Dances with Wolves ever managed, and even captured how the United States cavalry found itself caught in an uncompromising position of picking sides.  It was a complicated series of events that were manipulated by the villain Cole who appeared to be a good guy though 2/3rds of the movie.

By the time The Lone Ranger had competed his hero journey and arrived with his horse Silver to save the day at the end of the film with his six guns in his hands, a bullwhip on his hip and his uncompromising white hat running across the rooftops of the town on a horse to jump onto a moving train all to the William Tell Overture I thought I had died and gone to heaven.  For me that scene was the best moment of movie magic I have experienced since I was 12 years old and Indiana Jones ran his horse down a hillside to jump onto a moving truck to save the Ark of the Covenant from the evil Nazis.??????????????? There was pure magic in The Lone Ranger which was none stop for the last half hour of the film.  It helped that I went to the movie as a Lone Ranger fan as I think I have seen every bit of film ever produced about the Lone Ranger, but nobody makes movies like The Lone Ranger any more.  The last real attempt was the Indiana Jones films which I constantly thought about during the film. Ironically, Indiana Jones was modeled after the old Lone Ranger Republic Serials, so the ending to The Lone Ranger was a tribute to the history of film that took action to the next level.  The Lone Ranger was an instant favorite of mine that will go on my top twenty list.???????????????

But what was different about this Lone Ranger as opposed to other renditions was that Tonto was extraordinarily good.  Johnny Depp created one of the best characters of his career with Tonto and I found the scenes that took place in 1933 as the old Tonto was telling The Lone Ranger story to a little boy to be emotionally captivating.  These scenes were simply Johnny Depp at his absolute finest as an actor.  Tonto was a social outcast to his tribe that was living life with one firm foot planted into the spirit world and saw reality all too clearly giving the impression that he was insane through most of the film.  But he wasn’t, and it was obvious by the end of the film that Tonto as an extremely old man was deeply committed to the actual reality of justice that is hidden to most of the world, portraying a Yoda quality from The Empire Strikes Back that was captivating as a performance all by itself.

The only regret that I have about the movie is that I feel like it was made for people like me in mind, traditional Americans who love westerns, and characters who are uncompromisingly good.  It will not make a billion dollars at the box office like Iron Man and the last Pirates of the Caribbean film.  ???????????????It will be lucky to recover its $215 million dollar budget, which is unheard of for a western.  Only a company like Disney could have made a film like this, which was risky, so it is unlikely that Armie Hammer will have the chance to reprise his Lone Ranger role in the way that Robert Downey Jr has for Iron Man, and make future films.  The film by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Gore Verbinski using music by Hans Zimmer pulled out all the stops to make a great film under the penmanship of Ted Elliott, Justin Haythe, and Terry Rossio. ??????????????? Everyone involved with The Lone Ranger is among the best in their fields of endeavor, and it is a shame that the magic will probably never be seen again, because the box office will prevent it.  The Lone Ranger is one of those films that will percolate in America culture for a long time.  It will not have a big pop at the box office, but will be watched and loved for many years in a quiet way as viewers find it wonderfully good, but unsure why they like it so much while critics and industry professionals declare that it is such a bad film.  It is not the film that is bad for progressive types, but the message. ??????????????? Most people seeing The Lone Ranger cannot identify with the hero.  But they will identify with the villain, and that tends to make people angry.  Angry people do not throw down nearly a hundred dollars to see The Lone Ranger, which is what it cost me by the time we bought tickets and snacks, a rarity for us as a family.  I spent extra money at the theater knowing that a majority of the movie goers were not spending money on The Lone Ranger, so we broke our rule and bought the overpriced popcorn and drinks anyway, to support the film, and theater showing it.

Those critics missed the points and represent most opinions……………

Disney can roll the dice on movies like The Lone Ranger because they have so many other profitable revenue streams, which is just another benefit of capitalism.  I think the film will make its money back in the worldwide market so Disney won’t lose its money and Johnny Depp won’t lose face from his production credit.  Jerry Bruckheimer will continue to have successful films, including Pirates of the Caribbean 5 which is coming up in 2015.  But this will unfortunately be the last ride of this particular Lone Ranger, and that is unfortunate.  But if not for Disney, it would have never happened to begin with.  And because it did, I am very grateful.

Rich Hoffman

“Justice Comes with the Crack of a Whip!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

George Zimmerman Found Not Guilty: Why the “State” is dangerous

In spite of the “State’s” attempt at virtually every opportunity to prosecute George Zimmerman for the tragic shooting death of Trevon Martin in Samford, Florida the jury found him not guilty of murder on all accounts.  I first wrote about this back when the event happened, and my comments can be reviewed by CLICKING HERE.   Even the judge in the case seemed desperately to want a prosecution of Zimmerman based on her behavior during the trial and President Obama personally injected himself into the tragedy at the very beginning.  My statements about progressive groups using the Martin death as a power grab were accurate and thousands of commentators in the days to come will reiterate what I said a year ago now that Zimmerman is a free man and hindsight can be viewed so clearly.

For my own concern on the case, which I never thought should have been brought to trial as it is hypocritical at best given the amount of black on black crime that goes on in America,  the aggressive prosecution of Zimmerman in the first place reflects what I say here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom often, and that is the power of “the state” is too great and is focused on collectivism, and not individual rights which makes it a predatory entity.  The State of Florida pressed charges against Zimmerman after the Justice Department backed radical activists like Jessie Jackson and many other political heavy weights to protest the Samford legal system into taking on the case to avoid the anti-concept name calling of “racism.”  When the authorities prosecuted Zimmerman they essentially did so to appease the mob of democracy which had been hijacked by emotionally driven power grabbers who wanted to use tragedy to gain power for a demographic sector of human beings not based on individual merit, but collective identification.

The prosecution, the judge, the President of The United States, virtually everyone who collects a paycheck from the tax payers wanted to throw Zimmerman to the wolves not following any rule of law, or even the principles of logic, but to keep the mob from becoming unruly.  The law is not supposed to be shaped by gangs of influence builders who use force as a way to achieve their tactical objectives.  Law is supposed to be built on the philosophy of justice.  In the case of the Zimmerman trial, the jury system worked as the evidence was able to come to the surface and the prosecution’s case fell apart under scrutiny, as it had only been built off emotional principles to begin with.

The behavior of those prosecuting Zimmerman in Florida was disgusting, and was simply proof that if the state must pick between individual well-being, and statist protection of the system of which they benefit, they will pick openly sacrificing individuals to the jaws of an unruly mob every time.  When Jessie Jackson attempted to organize the “Million Hoodie March” in Samford he was not interested in the facts of the case, he simply wanted to use racism’s force to impose his will upon the “state” with a show of democratic strength that would make emotional decisions instead of logical ones.  It didn’t matter to Eric Holder’s Justice Department what the rules of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law was under the Tenth Amendment.  The White House wanted to capitalize on the Martin death as much as anybody to remove guns from society and attack the idea of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” premise.  The individual represented by Zimmerman was to be sacrificed for the good of the collective, as the protestors assimilated Trevon Martin into their hive of collectivism.  The death of Martin was an attack on their hive, the way they were portraying it, and the individual responsible had to pay, even if the law was on his side.  The masses were intent to change the law by force of will and the state was willing to play along out of self-preservation.

The case of George Zimmerman should alarm all American citizens to the dangers of collectivism.  Americans do not live in tribes or gangs of thugs who can march around and impose emotional whims on justice—at least the ideal of America refutes such a notion.  When such a thing happens it must be rejected from the outset.  George Zimmerman should have never been prosecuted.  He did what he was allowed to do under Florida law, and no gang from The White House, from any Rainbow Collation of Civil Rights wannabes, or lobby group has the right to change a law that they do not have a right to vote on.  Florida’s laws are not federal law, yet the federal government attempted to apply its influence through collective identification to achieve political party goals that are not good for any individual, but for the good of machine politics only.   In Samford, Florida two people struggled in a street fight.  One of them had a gun.  The one with the gun had control of the fight’s outcome, and that is the end of the story.

Entire generations who have been taught the “statist” approach to justice and believe that just because a person has a skin color, or a particular gender that their assimilation into a collective identification allows them to say and do whatever they want so long as the masses have their back, and this is not the spirit of any kind of rule of law in America.  Such behavior might be seen in some third-world dump where collectivism rules over individual merit, but not in America.  Yet out of kindness, Americans have put up with the introduction of anti-concepts by the political establishments who wish to grab power on the backs of every tragedy, and over time, the impositions have mounted.  And those anti-concepts where values are replaced with emotional judgments came crashing down in the George Zimmerman trial.

All appeared to be working in favor of the prosecution in the Zimmerman trial until they called their star witness Rachel Jeantel.  The world was tuned in to the Zimmerman trial and saw firsthand the reality of modern America guided by the hand of progressive politics when she spoke.  Jeantel was the product of Jesse Jackson’s collectivism and a public education system that has been shaped by illogical sensitivity and fear, instead of wisdom, performance, and common sense.  When she started speaking the reality behind the mob was seen by all, and a new direction needed to be pursued.  It was obvious that the prosecution was hoping that an emotional case presented by them would trump any facts, and once their star witness blew that strategy, they had nothing left to present to justify malicious murder by Zimmerman.  Any person of logic would fear the ignorance of a society that functions from such primal motivations, and even though Martin was a youth carrying a box of Skittles mainstream America got a glimpse into how Travon Martin saw the world outside of black America with Jeantel’s testimony of what was said over the phone calling Zimmerman, a “creepy-ass cracker.”

All across the nation black communities have been enslaved by politics to continue living in poverty by beholding ideologies that are destructive to their well-being.  Young people have been led to believe that they can think such things about other races as calling them names like “cracker” and other derogatory terms without feeling the teeth of ramifications.  They believe such things because campaigns like Jesse Jackson’s protests have been successful in the past of excusing bad behavior behind the mask of collectivism, and they assume that it will always be the case.  So they ignore the rules of gated communities, of private property, of private rights, and impose themselves at will upon a population that has been paralyzed by fear of the anti-concept of racism.  But if there is a lesson to the case of George Zimmerman it is that laws do, or are supposed to overcome emotional testimony, so long as a jury is wise and uses the rule of law constructed by good philosophy to trump mob like imposition.  And that the laws of a state such as Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” rule cannot be manipulated by federal influence even with a gang of emotional zealots sent to Samford to change public perception with mass consensus in a direct attempt to override logic into a stew of collectivism that is destructive to the idea of American independence.

Rich Hoffman

“Justice Comes with the Crack of a Whip!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Sex in Lakeland Florida: Police abuse women because statism allows them to

Just a few years ago criticizing public employees like cops, firefighters, and teachers was considered extremely taboo.  If you did it, you were called names by the statist establishment.  Prior to getting involved with the Zombies of Lakota I was like a lot of people, I suspected that bad things were going on in the world, especially government, but I didn’t know to what extent.  Once I discovered to what radical measures public employees would embark to protect their social image, I became more outraged with each passing week culminating in the writing of my most recent novel, Tail of the Dragon which is becoming something of a libertarian cult classic as it is extremely critical of public employees.  It is so much so that my editor thought a lot of the behavior described in the book was made up, when in fact I had done extensive research into the behavior of the Tennessee Highway Patrol to make sure I did not unfairly portray them in my massive car chase story.  Now, more people are starting to feel more comfortable talking about their bad experiences with public employees as the taboo is being removed—justifiably so.  As I travel around Florida quite a lot and consider it a second home, a recent outbreak of stories caught my attention involving the Lakeland police department that deserves extreme criticism.  But before diving into those events, it must first be explored why public employees are prone to corruption.

The trouble with tax payer funded jobs no matter what level they are provided is that they encourage employees to comply with rules and regulations that are not constructed by their own minds.  Public employees, most likely every one of them, hope to bring meaning to their own lives by sacrificing their efforts to social causes—like teaching, fighting fires, or doing police work.  However all those positions are often controlled by labor unions, which are driven toward liberal politics by generating revenue to support progressive social policies.  The duality of this problem informs the workers that they are simply cogs in the system and that the statism of that system is more important than their individual needs.  Young employees tend to be deeply ideological toward statism while older employees are often broken mentally by their retirements.  This leaves employees in the in-between phases—somewhere around the 7 to 15 years of employment mark–to be deeply corrupt morally, and ethically and it is this group of public employees that often get involved in the sex scandals that are raging in public schools and on police forces.  Their minds are bored as their wages are often very good, yet the contents of their jobs are not stimulating.  Cops spend a lot of time waiting for something to happen and most weeks of the year, there isn’t much to do especially in a community like Lakeland, Florida which is a direct benefactor to the Disney World boom of Orlando.  Because of the extra tourism dollars that come to Lakeland from Orlando, the cops there have nice new cars, a nice police station, and more employees on staff than they really need which of course is sold to the community as “safety.”  But the reality is that there are a lot of public employees who are paid a lot of money to not think, and to simply go with the flow of the system—put in their time and retire with a wonderful pension.  In the meantime, they look for some way to live out their individualities through acts of rebellion prior to surrendering to the statism of the systems they work for.

In Lakeland Sue Eberle, aged 37, has told officials that she had consensual and sometimes coerced sex with police officers and firefighters, and that she once was propositioned by a city worker in Lakeland. Eberle’s accounts of the liaisons were largely corroborated by her sexual partners and others within the police department, and published in a graphic, 59-page report written in an incredulous tone by the county’s top prosecutor. It said the department’s problems investigating crimes might be caused by some high-ranking officers being more interested in having sex with Eberle than doing their jobs.  In essence Sue Eberle was the victim of sexual abuse as a child so she had boundary issues apparently, and once the police department found out about it as Eberle was also a public employee, they psychologically took advantage of the woman to have frequent sex with her all over Lakeland which the entire police force including superior officers knew about.  Read more at the link below:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/10/moral-bankruptcy-shocking-number-of-fla-cops-entangled-in-deplorable-sex-scandal/

Eberle is married to an understanding husband who seems to really want to help her with her issues, and most of the police were married also.  Apparently in Lakeland nobody cares about such promiscuous sex.  But what is worse is the massive display of collectivism that occurred within the police department which can only be compared to a bunch of high school kids who wish to exploit the class slut to experiment sexually so they can gain experience. The Lakeland police were sharing the body of Sue Eberle without a care in the world to the impact it might have on her husband, or even their own families and they all knew that each other were involved in sexual liaisons with the woman.  The practice was so common that it was a joke within the department where even senior officials blew the behavior off as commonplace.

Yet the abuse was not regulated to just the public employees in Lakeland where police were able to live out their individual fantasies of imposing their manhood upon a yielding female, because the target was too easy.  Some of those police officers looked for ways to turn up the heat on the civilian population.  The cause of all this sexual deviancy of course is the modern trend of confusing men who biologically are alpha males and telling them that in the context of their spouses they are supposed to be betas.  Men are told to yield to women who are convinced that they are supposed to be alpha as well.  Two alpha’s in a sexual/business relationship like marriage causes conflict which both parties avoid by living separate lives within the household sexually and emotionally.  Men who know they cannot be alpha males in their own homes will seek to create a caricature of themselves elsewhere where they can at least pretend to be strong alpha males even as they may appear to be yielding beta males socially.  Visit any gentleman club, or check the client listing of any escort service and hundreds of thousands of such men will be discovered.  For more on this read my article about Fifty Shades of Gray.  CLICK HERE. The problem is one of the most destructive trends in modern society and is exacerbated when public employees who are crippled psychologically are given power over other human beings as authority figures.

A Lakeland, Florida police officer recently asked a woman to lift up her shirt, bearing her midriff, and shake out her bra during a traffic stop that is being investigated for the “highly questionable” and “demeaning” search method, the Ledger, a Lakeland newspaper, reported.  Zoe Brugger was pulled over by Lakeland Police Officer Dustin Fetz on May 21 for driving with a broken headlight. She was then found to be driving without a valid license as well. But the Ledger reported State Attorney Investigator Mike Brown’s report saying what happened during the stop was a violation of Brugger’s constitutional rights.  It is obvious the Officer Fetz enjoyed having power over the very compliant Brugger, and her compliance fed the ego of the officers prompting them like drug addicts to pursue more investigation to get their mental, and sexual fix.  Read more at the link below:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/21/police-officer-has-woman-perform-highly-questionable-and-demeaning-bra-shake-during-traffic-stop/

It is obvious that Lakeland, Florida has too many police officers as there isn’t much to do but to have sex with other employees, and harass citizens during routine traffic stops.  The cause of the corruption was government convincing the voters of Lakeland that for their own safety they needed to hire a large police force that they didn’t need to feed off tax dollars so that they could harass the tax payers with authority given to them by the state.  Because the police jobs were created to fulfill the desires of statism and not logical need, the positions were filled by employees that are dangerous psychologically and given authority over the innocent by means that violate individual rights.  The acts of sex that have been discovered in Lakeland are rampant in virtually every community.  I know a lot of cops, and have known many more in communities from West Virginia to the upper counties of Ohio and the stories of what has happened in Lakeland can be found in nearly every policing district to some extent.  Lakeland is not the exception, but the general rule.  Anytime there are state employees that are given authority over others, abuses are found.

My anger at this statist system of thought is the underlining theme of my novel Tail of the Dragon.  For those who share that anger, I would suggest reading it and enjoying with great fanfare the act of rebellion that reading that book represents against the statism of our modern age which values beta men who would rather cry over spilt milk, than to show any level of grit in the face of danger.   The sexual deviancy of the police in Lakeland is endemic of the type of people who are attracted to public sector jobs, and those types of people should not be given authority over others.  So long as it continues abuses will continue.  The dialogue that is currently present is only touching the tip of an iceberg as these corruptions have persisted over many years.  Only now are people beginning to admit that they do not enjoy trading their individual sanctity for security.  However, there are more than ever due to social breakdowns, people like Sue Eberle who might appear as a perfectly rational human being at the grocery store, but has within her mind open doors imposed upon her as a child by trusted family members who taught her that open coercive sex is the norm.  Those people vote, and in a democracy since they have no moral barriers against statist behavior do not see the fallacy of their involvement.  They vote for every school levy, every fire levy, and every police levy because they believe that their society will be safe if those employees are present when exactly the opposite is true.  Society is safer when public employees are reduced and statism is kept out of communities allowing individuality to reign as the ruling factor over the tyranny of the power-hungry public employees who have been given authority to act out their deepest, darkest fantasies while being paid by the tax payer to be social deviants all in the name of justice.

Sue Eberle is not alone…………………….

Rich Hoffman

“Justice Comes with the Crack of a Whip!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The Zombies of Lakota: Voting NO on tax increases to turn a nightmare into a dream

Lakota has projected declining student enrollment for the next 7 years and the $20 million that has been cut out of the budget over the last 3 years reflects the roughly 9% enrollment decline that has occurred at Lakota over that span.  Yet, the school board is pursuing a tax increase anyway in spite of the downward demand for their services and is ignoring all the economic facts of reality.  To sell the levy this time around in 2013 the administrators are using tested buzz words like “security” and “technology” as a way to justify their excessive spending, but there is something more sinister behind the ploy that I have just now identified.  I have called the levy supporters at Lakota everything from “looters” to “prostitutes” because of their desire to steal money from the community with coercive tax increases but neither of those definitions properly captures the cannibalistic nature of the Lakota levy addicts.  Calling them “latte sipping prostitutes” was actually a compliment compared to the actual reality.  A prostitute makes a conscious decision to sell themselves in exchange for something—but these modern levy supporters at Lakota seem to not even have that much conscious thought about the matter.  With the announcement of this 2013 levy, that leaves only one option for the nature of the levy supporters.  They are simply mindless zombies addicted to the financial resources of the Liberty Township and West Chester communities and like their movie counterparts who roam about half dead looking to suck the life out of any human being that crosses their path, these Lakota Zombies wish to do the same but on a massive scale attacking businesses, and property values to feed their unfathomable appetites for destruction.

The Zombies of Lakota are mindless drones who march about without a thought in their minds and simply repeat slogans created for them by the organized labor force to gather up enough funds to feed their democratic politicians.  The slogans are designed to make them appear like everyone else in the community so that they can get close enough to suck the life out of another taxpaying victim.  They utter phrases like “it’s all for the children,” “schools are operating efficiently,” and “technology is needed to teach children in a global marketplace.”  But the real intention is to get close enough to voters so that they can suck the life out of them through taxation for mindless teacher contracts that only feed more mindless political drones in Columbus through lobby power, a lobby that will place more tax paying victims upon an altar to be consumed by the Zombies of Public Education.

There simply isn’t any other explanation for the type of people who are not cognizant to the facts of reality.  Zombies move about like normal human beings, yet they don’t ever seem conscious of any mode of living beyond the mindless consumption of others to sustain themselves, and this is what the Zombies of Lakota are doing.  They have been told how to balance their budget by people who are good at such things, and they have ignored all the advice.  In the case of Lakota in 2013 they need to have major labor reductions to deal with the reduced enrollment, but the Zombies of Lakota only know to consume.  Talking to them is like speaking to a zombie that just looks blankly at you and drools not hearing a word that is spoken unless it involves the consumption of tax dollars.  Then they grunt and get excited at the prospect of higher taxes the way movie zombies crave blood.

The Zombies of Lakota feature an endless parade of drones that speak absent-mindedly in support of higher taxes to feed their spawns.  With each new levy there have been new zombies to take up the argument constructed for them by organized labor to justify the community sacrifice of their wealth for the construction of more zombies perpetuating an endless cycle of Obama voters and environmental wackos that are produced by modern public education.  They say the same thing year after year, levy after levy, even when the conditions have changed.  It is incomprehensible to them to consider proper budget management by means of wage reductions, employee reductions, or by actually using technology to save on labor overhead.  Instead they simply utter their slogans and grunt for higher taxes.

In the movies zombies are usually defeated easily in the daylight hours and can be easily outmaneuvered as they lack independent thought.  They are only dangerous if you let them get too close and get caught in one of their traps.  The Zombies of Lakota are defeated by presenting the facts to them which makes them shrivel up in pain like a demon that has had Holy Water thrown upon their foreheads.  Facts destroy the Zombies of Lakota, facts like their need to lay off workers in the years to come instead of paying the staff they have currently for a job that isn’t needed do to the declining enrollment.  But the traps the zombies set are in their campaign slogans where they attempt to appeal to the rational and sane by exploiting children for their endless desire for consumption.

The Zombies of Lakota can appear to look the same way as any sane voter who will typically vote NO on all tax increases.  They can look like normal people by dressing like them, walking like them, and even smelling like them…………..but they aren’t normal.  The dead giveaway is when the zombies declare that the district has done all it can, and that children are suffering as a result.  If a persona says something to that effect, they are a Zombie of Lakota, and they are looking to suck the life out of you without a care for your well-being.  They are mindless automatons unable to think outside of their own hunger for tax revenue.

This fall of 2013 when Halloween howls haunted fantasies into the chilled night air the Zombies of Lakota will be out in full force looking to pass a tax increase on voters for the November ballot.  They will hit the streets walking from door to door attempting to consume more victims, they will be out in full force at football games, at grocery stores, on street corners attempting to suck the life of the people who live in the district with no thought of what comes on the day after, but their never-ending hunger for more…….more……..and more tax money.  The Zombies of Lakota are coming, and they are looking for victims.  The ways to beat them is to Vote No on the upcoming levy and send them back to the places where dreams become nightmares.  A failure to do so will only make more of them until sooner or later the world will be filled with the Zombies of Lakota who are parasites to everything that is good and profitable.

Rich Hoffman

“Justice Comes with the Crack of a Whip!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

“You’ll Be Hearing From Mr. Rich Hoffman”: Sharon Poe talks to Darryl Parks about school levies on 700 WLW

Sharon Poe is a tax fighter in the Mason City school district and a personal friend of mine who was on 700 WLW with Darryl Parks recently as they discussed the ridiculousness of the local school levies that are emerging for the November 2013 ballot.  Darryl Parks and I used to have very similar views of public education and the stupidity of school levies as a way to fund learning for children.  But that has changed over the years.  My fight with Lakota has been intense at times and they asked me through members of No Lakota Levy for a cease-fire in the spring of 2012, which I gave them.  The terms of the deal were that I wouldn’t continue to expose their inefficiencies on national radio stations and television, and they wouldn’t ask for a levy for 2 years.  The deal was made two months after the famous “Latte Sipping Prostitute” comments that I made about the typical levy advocate at Lakota and I told Channel 19 the specifics of the deal when they interviewed me for the announcement of the levy truce from Lakota.  CLICK HERE to review.  During the broadcast on WLW Sharon told Darryl that Lakota was getting ready to put another levy attempt on the ballot because she knew what I had told her, about the 2 year deal with Lakota.  Basically Lakota made a deal with their teachers union in 2011 to take a pay freeze and that deal expires in June of 2014, so they need money to pay their teachers long promised raises.  But my argument all along is that the teachers and administration at an average pay of over $63K per year in wages were making too much money to begin with, and needed to slash their wages by at least 5% to properly balance their budget which has been ignored by the administration.  Instead the school board chose to spend a lot of money rebuilding their public relations image and disregarded any attempt to reign in their extraordinary wages and hoped that the community would go back to sleep in time for them to pass another levy in 2013, ahead of the new teacher contract.  Their actions were known all along, and Sharon warned over the 50,000 watt flame thrower of WLW that Darryl could expect to “Hear from Mr. Rich Hoffman” once Lakota made their announcement, which they now have.  For me, this officially breaks the cease-fire, and now the campaign against their tax increase can begin.  They won’t like the results.

Unlike Darryl Parks, where he supports public education because it is attached to property values, I have evolved into thinking that government should not be involved in education in any capacity.  The more I learned about the kind of characters in public education, the more I am convinced that those types of people should not be teaching the next generation.  My position has moved from one of pure logic centering on cost to one of philosophy.  The game plan of public education is wrong, and I cannot support it knowing what I do after my experiences in dealing with Lakota administrators, then comparing those observations with districts all over Ohio.  The failure of public schools repeats in virtually every district no matter what the wealth demographic, or population density.  I see that competition needs to be introduced to the education process, and that property values need to be divorced from school districts if such values can ever be expected to stabilize over time.  To continue to participate in the reactionary nature of school aged real estate catering is to destroy communities over the long haul, and Lakota is a prime example of how this process needs to implement such changes in public perception.

So I have no desire in any way to preserve the current education system.  Nothing Lakota says is important as far as rationalizations for their monetary needs.   I am not sympathetic to their issues.  Lakota has become arrogant in their assumption that they are the center piece of a community, and they were only allowed to become such a thing because of the government monopoly of public education that is tied directly to property values.  The arrangement is a government scam that ends up teaching children liberal oriented values using money from conservatives to pay for instruction they fundamentally don’t agree with.  As a tax payer, I do not support Common Core education, I do not support Global Economies, and I do not support global warming greenie weenie philosophies which are so persistent in public education.  I do not support an education system that teaches the earth is more important than a human being.  I support an education system that teaches that the human being as a thinking, conscious creature has dominion over the earth and can use the tools of the planet, and rules of nature to fashion a better life for themselves.  This is not the teaching of public education, and children should not be forced to learn such anti-concepts.  Tax payers who do not agree with the voodoo ideology of the philosopher Kant, the economics of Keynes, or the fuzzy science of AL Gore should not be forced to pay for their own philosophic destruction in a social context.  A couple of years ago when I called my political critics “prostitutes” I did so knowing that I was finished supporting public education as a legitimate social mechanism, because I was tired of supporting with my tax dollars people who were hostile to my outlook on life.

During the span of time that Lakota agreed to a ceasefire I decided that upon the next levy, I would do what I could to get more people involved in the levy fight.  Prior to my experiences at Lakota the number one concern that anti levy advocates had was the constant social abuse they received from levy supporters who clearly use peer pressure to override logic during elections.  My reasoning for calling the bullies of Lakota the names I did was to demonstrate to the many hundreds if not thousands of Lakota residents the limits of the pro levy supporters power, so that they could see for themselves that the bullies had no real weapon beyond name calling.  In that way, upon the next levy attempt, more people than me could speak out against them without fear of boycotts, vandalism, or social castigation, which are all tactics of school levy supporters.  Over the last two years, this has been the case.  More people than ever are feeling comfortable speaking about their displeasure of school levies.  More of them are willing to go on the record in the local newspapers, and speak on television, and that is the key to defeating a fourth attempt by Lakota.

I have argued every logical angle there is against the need for any levy, and Lakota doesn’t listen and has no desire to start.  So further broadcasts of logic on the radio which are recorded for all time online, did not teach the Lakota administrators anything, so to continue to do the same kind of thing would be a waste of time.  Instead, I promised that when Lakota did propose a new levy that I would have something special in store.  I will leave the conventional arguments to others who can take the place of what I used to represent.  My new position will be much different, but every bit as sensational.  The intent won’t be this time to just examine the foolish nature of public education funding methods that are based idiotically on Keynesian economics, but on the utter debacle that the statist philosophy of learning under the United States Department of Education has created, and continues to ask for more money to perpetuate.

I welcome the help from other anti-tax resisters, yet recognize that new strategies must always be utilized if fresh ideas are to be injected into any given argument.  For the Lakota Levy of 2013, it is time to take those fresh ideas to a new level which represents my true feelings of what the levy represents to the community, and to the poor minds of the children who are subjected to such progressive education that teaches chaos, irresponsibility, and perpetual government dependence from unionized public workers who disguise their greed and lust for power behind the innocence of children who have been abandoned by short-sighted parents, and exploited by statist public school administers to be delivered into adulthood as shells of their true potential all in the name of tax increases.

It’s time to turn things up a bit now that the truce has been called off by the Lakota school system.  Sharon was correct when she told Darryl Parks that he’d be hearing from me.  But to what degree has been a secret that I’ve kept close and thought hard about over the last two years.  And its time to let that secret out of the bag…………………….

Rich Hoffman

“Justice Comes with the Crack of a Whip’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

In the “Rabbit Hole” at Hollywood Studios: The best that the world has to offer metaphysically

I don’t turn down media requests often, but I did the day I was visiting Hollywood Studios recently with my family.  We had just parked for the day as swarms of people were migrating to the entrance when an interview request came over my cell phone.  I told the producer that I was at Disney World and that I would not be giving any interviews for the entire day.  Hollywood Studios for me was more than just a visit to an amusement park; it was a life centering expedition that was the climax of a vacation where I turned off everything for one week, including personal email correspondence.  I had some difficult problems to work through and the best place to do it was at one of the most creative places on earth, Disney World, and more suitable to my personal tastes was Hollywood Studios.  What sets Hollywood Studios apart from every other theme park in the world is that they go to the extraordinary trouble of having so many live performances as part of their attractions.  Hollywood Studios has all the showmanship of a Vegas stage show, with the purity of imagination and family entertainment that is specific to Disney, and I relish those environments as a way to recharge my own creative impulses.  So I spent the week leading up to our trip to Hollywood Studios reading books on the balcony of our Cape Canaveral condo, eating 24” pizzas, playing board games with family members till late in the night, playing miniature golf, visiting local tourist spots, throwing football on the beach, and preparing to see two of the greatest live stunt shows anywhere, the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular, and Lights, Motors, Action, Extreme Stunt Show.  My footage from these events can be seen in the video below.  Media interviews were forbidden as my thoughts were pretty far down my own personal rabbit hole.

The reason for my self-imposed media exile was that I was thinking of a controversial and complicated thought that I had been wrestling with for about 6 months, and I needed to confirm my suspicions by visiting a known refuge for dreamers, and social statists alike who all desire the same thing.  At Disney World no matter what the political affiliation, no mater what the personal philosophy, no matter what the demographic background, every visitor at least wishes to touch the face of greatness for just a moment, and at Disney World this experience is very expensive.  But the Disney Company uses the money they make to purchase paradise from the hands of tyranny which exists just out of reach from the Disney Properties in Central Florida.   I have said that my favorite place on earth is the Epcot Center located on the property, but very close to it is my love of Hollywood Studios, which holds within it the magic of imagination in the purist form that came directly from the mind of Walt Disney.  Located on the Hollywood Studios property is the regional airplane that Uncle Walt used to buy up the Central Florida property in small increments to create his Magic Kingdom.  If Disney had not bought up all that “worthless” property and had the vision to build all the wonderful things that are currently at the Disney World Complex, the earth would be on a march back toward the primitive tribal tendencies of mankind’s origins.  It was the work of one man who made Disney World such a great place with the solitary intention of giving all human beings in the world the hopes that can only be created with thoughts produced from the mind.DSC04794

A few days prior my oldest daughter flew into Orlando prompting us to pick her up at the International Airport that was built because of Disney World.  The airport has a gigantic hotel in the center of it and is a marvel of efficiency.  It is one of the busiest airports in the world and has direct flights to it that are only rivaled by places like Hong Kong, London or Paris.  People fly to Orlando for one primary reason, and that is to attend one of the many parks that are in Central Florida—all of which exist because of Walt Disney.  As we waited for my daughter to come down the terminal merge, my wife and I notice how many foreign nationals were filling the unloading area.  There were clearly people from Brazil, Argentina, China, France, and Russia waiting around us as they all had matching t-shirts indicating their origins so they wouldn’t become lost from one another in a strange country.   I saw some of those same t-shirts just a few days later at Hollywood Studios.  They had traveled from around the world to see some aspect of Disney World.  But why…………………that was the source of my quagmire?  It wasn’t enough for me to rationalize that Disney World was just a neat place.  There was more to it than that, and I needed the answer to complete my nagging thoughts.  This is why I had to visit Hollywood Studios with my family and visit some of the attractions that are very dear to my heart.  In some ways visiting Hollywood Studios was like returning home for Christmas to me.  The ideals represented at that particular park are part of my very soul.DSC04777

One of the things that most impresses me at Hollywood Studios is their live shows, the amount of instances where an actor/actress actually handles the attractions.  This is most notable at the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular and Lights, Motors, Action, Extreme Stunt Show which to me are worth the price of admission by themselves.  The Indian Jones show is housed on a huge stage that takes up nearly a sixth of the entire park grounds and holds 2000 people in the stands.  It is quite a production by itself.  But over at Lights, Motors, Action, that show features a grandstand that puts to shame most seating platforms at any state fair in the country, it is so massive that it rivals some football stadiums, and was built just for the stunt show which only plays three times a day.  Those stands hold 5000 viewers for each show, and are truly colossal when taken into perspective.  Only at Disney World could stunt shows be given these kinds of financial resources, which is why those two features are so valuable to me.  I had my grandson with me and even though he was only 9 months old, the pictures of his visit will mean a great deal to him later.  Plus I have a very strong belief that worldly impressions are written into the brain of children from a very young age, so it is my task to make sure he gets these experiences, even if he doesn’t consciously remember them.DSC04778

Hollywood Studios because of their other theme parks is able to dedicate their attention to these live performances, which would be devastatingly cost prohibitive if attempted on their own.   I did rough calculations of the amount of employees that Hollywood Studios employed on the grounds and the results are unfathomable.   Hollywood Studios does not skimp.  Even on their Great Movie Ride, they have theatrical performances where actors/hosts, interact with animatronics to provide a truly epic performance where they didn’t have to.  The Little Mermaid stage play featured many live puppeteers where most theme parks would have relied on mechanical props that would give repeatability time and time again.  Hollywood Studios is not just dedicated to memorializing the movie business, it is dedicated to the unique human touch that live performances provide and the employees bring a lot of heart and soul to each performance.DSC04781

When my wife and I dined at the Sci Fi Drive In restaurant, the employees were all happy to be working, and projected a feeling of competency.  The same level of attention radiated to even the gift shop attendants.  While my wife and I watched our grandson as my kids rode the Tower of Terror a rainstorm erupted and we sought shelter in a gift store where a nice woman with a heavy Kenyan accent showed us to a nice spot in the store where the air conditioner was running on overdrive so we could cool down the baby and get him out of the direct rain.  She didn’t have to be nice in that situation, but she was.  She was happy to be working there, and it showed.  This was the usual experience, not at all the exception.

But the epic performance that easily could have been shown on Broadway in New York was the Fantasmic firework show that took place in an amphitheater setting behind the Tower of Terror ride.  For over a half hour Hollywood Studios put on a firework show, a light show, a stage show, and a puppet show on a lake of fire with a giant fire-breathing dragon all rolled up into one performance.  They had built another 5000 seat theater similar to the one at Lights, Motors, Action and it was filled with thousands of voices cheering on Mickey Mouse as he battled the dragon from Sleeping Beauty and Fantasia.  A gentle roar emerged from the crowd that was as ambitious as a crowd at a football game.  As I watched it looked like at least a 100 employees where working to make the Fantasmic show work in a section of the park that was only used for one show at the end of the day.  The show itself was just another example of the audacity of Walt Disney World to build huge theaters only to be used once a day.  Hollywood Studios seems to almost show off their vast employment ability by providing jobs that no other place of business could afford to make available.DSC04799

No government on earth at any level of endeavor could create the kind of jobs that are created at Disney World.  Hollywood Studios is able to provide large quantities of jobs to creative oriented people just because they are such a large organization that is so profitable they can provide jobs that require such incredibly large overhead.  And that is why so many foreign visitors packed the Orlando airport and Hollywood Studios.  There is only one country in the entire world and really only one individual from that country that could even envision a place like Disney World.  As I studied the vast packs of people from other countries navigating the streets of Hollywood Studios with great enthusiasm the concept hit me like a ton of bricks.  The countries where these visitors came from are completely unable to produce any version of Disney World on their own.  The only way they could get close to such a place was to save enough money to fly to the United States and visit the place for themselves, a world created by Walt Disney with sheer imagination.DSC04801

Most people come and go from Disney World without any inkling as to what they saw or why they liked what they saw.  They only know as they travel back to their hotels and rest their tired bones in beds that are not their own, leaving them in debt from a vacation that cost between $2000 to $10,000 to do correctly, that they tried really hard to get their families to Disney World for some mysterious reason that dawned on them when they arrived at the front gates in the morning. At Hollywood Studios I took a mental survey all day long counting employees, both in front and behind the scenes, and the general philosophy of the entire place and I realized that the cost of the $90 admission ticket per person was paid for with just two of the major stunt shows, Indiana Jones and Lights, Motors, Action.  The rest of the park was just value added, bonuses if visitors had the courage or wherewithal to understand what they were seeing and how important it was to see.  Most people who I watched leave at the end of the day saw a lot, but remembered very little except what their cameras would reveal to them later as their minds were on information overload.  For most visitors they left Disney World a couple grand poorer, and wondering if it was all worth it because they saw so much that they can’t remember anything.  But I don’t have that handicap, and neither does my family.  I was much honored to see that my kids enjoyed most at Hollywood Studios the exhibit dedicated to Walt Disney: One Man’s Dream and the Animation Art Gallery.  Those two exhibits were hidden in the back of the park and were the least visited areas by far.  My kids didn’t want to leave them as we spent nearly 1/5th of the entire day in that small section of the park as the key to all of Disney World was contained within the displays.DSC04800

Disney World sells hope, dreams and the power of imagination to people who are short on supply.  On the other end, Disney World supplies thousands upon thousands of good jobs to people who wouldn’t otherwise have them.  There is more wealth in just Orlando because of Disney World than most of the counties that visited from across the world’s oceans, and all that activity was driven by one man who simply wanted to open up the minds of all people and plant dreams upon their thoughts hoping to make their life just a little bit better.  Disney World is expensive, but they more than give back the value of their efforts if visitors can maintain the ability to absorb everything.DSC04787

One of my son-in-laws is from England and under the simmering nighttime lights toward the close of the day; he proclaimed how grateful he was to be able to attend a Disney World park.  He stated that like the many visitors I had seen that day from countries all over the world that he feared that he might never make it to such a place in his lifetime. Now he has been to the Epcot Center and Hollywood Studios and his imagination was on overdrive.  It was for people like him that Disney dreamed a dream of creating Disney World.  Disney offered the experience to everyone who could come up with the price of admission, but he knew that only a handful out of thousands would walk away at the end of each day aware of what Disney World was all about.  It is a credit to the company of Disney that they have not forgotten who their founder was, and fight to this very day to keep his dream alive without pretentious input on the behalf of arrogant CEOs who wish to leave behind their own mark of greatness.  For Disney it was never about being great—just being good.DSC04783

When I arrived back to the condo that night sitting by the raging stormy waters of the Atlantic I read the reviews to the new Disney film, the Lone Ranger and saw that like Man of Steel, critics had panned the film a dud.  The modern-day progressive critics can’t stand a clean hero who saves the day with a white hat and stallion which is what the Lone Ranger represents, and they are hoping desperately that the film falls on its face as a financial loss for Disney.  Those same critics chastise the Disney Company for the high cost of their theme parks and their empire-like status over so many treasured stories, like Pixar films, Marvel Comics, Star Wars and of course the great classics.  They despise the Disney Company because they are a successful organization that makes good things for people.  Without Disney, much of the world would not currently know anything of goodness, because it is the foundations that were set by Walt Disney which carry on to this very day that are the only hope for large portions of the world to touch ideals that are bigger than their statist lifestyles could garner for them under any other circumstances.DSC04767

I treasure our visit to Hollywood Studios for deeply personal reasons.  I feel calibrated in ways that are better than what I’ve felt in over a decade.  I felt as at home at the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular as I do in my own living room.  I feel I know every person who worked that stage, and worked as stunt people even though I have not met any of them.  They knew the same as I did about Hollywood Studios, and they understood how special the place was, and is to the minds of the world.  There are lessons that should be taken from Disney World that government everywhere would do well to follow.  I left the park that day feeling deeply sorry for the people who had to fly 10,000 to 20,000 miles to arrive at a park I only had to travel 1000 miles to attend.  I wish that they lived in a culture that could produce a comparative experience, but they don’t.  Only in America can such a place exist, and only America can produce people like Walt Disney without crushing them out of relevance with statist controls over their very minds.DSC04765

When I turned down the media request that morning upon arriving at Hollywood Studios, now the answer to why is known—I consider the place to be sacred–that nothing of the outside world should penetrate under any circumstances, and I held to that oath.  My daughters watched me hang up the phone to the producer who had called me, and understood without any words needing to be exchanged.  In our family there is nothing more sacred than the thoughts that the mind produces, and there is no place on earth more dedicated to thought and imagination than Disney World.  When we visit, the rest of the world goes on hold.  When I visit such places I touch the most essential parts of my character, and find thoughts that my mind has been desperately trying to push out into the light of day.  And for that even though Walt Disney has long since left the earth, he has handed to me a baton of understanding that his Disney World complex was designed to invoke.  I know what to do with that baton, and understand the meaning behind the meanings.  DSC04756What is sometimes obvious to all, are simply the contorted images of fatigue that can be seen at the gates of Disney World at the end of the day.  Most people see and hear the same things, but they are unable to absorb the information and understand the value.  They only sense that something important happened and they immediately begin saving their money for the next visit.  But the lesson of Disney World is not that it is to remain an empire in Central Florida, but that the ideas are intended to spread to the far corners of the world to take hold and improve the lives of everyone.  The lessons of Disney World are not to copy the business plan of the Disney Company, but to spread the message that underlies everything that the company represents, the telling of stories that are important to the soul of all human beings and their need of mythology to communicate their hopes and dreams to others representing their innermost values.  For me it is in the stunt shows at Hollywood Studios.  At many levels, I feel an affinity for the danger, the glory, and the explosive hype of the stuntmen who must bring to reality the thoughts of a writer with their finger on the pulse of mythology and the yearnings of the human race fighting against all forms of statism.  At Disney World the fight is in the imagination, but in the reality outside the property borders it is quite literal, and the great quest to attend the parks every year from visitors is to escape for just a few hours that horrific realization that no place but Disney World can provide such a safe haven for those with thoughts in their minds and the courage to use them.

Rich Hoffman

“Justice Comes with the Crack of a Whip’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com